The great Han
Subtitle: race, nationalism, and tradition in China today
By: Kevin Carrico
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 264
ISBN-13: 9780520295490; 9780520295506
Subjects: Politics and culture; Race; Costume; Nationalism; Racism; Ethnicity; History
Description: "The Great Han is an ethnographic study of the Han Clothing movement (Hanfu yundong), a neo-traditionalist and majority racial nationalist movement that has emerged in China since 2001. Participants come together both online and in person in cities across China to revitalize their utopian vision of the authentic "Great Han" and corresponding "real China" through pseudo-traditional ethnic dress, reinvented Confucian ritual, and anti-foreign sentiment. Employing close analysis of movement ideas and practices, this book finds that the movement's "real China," envisioning a pure, perfectly ordered, ethnically homogeneous, and secure society, is in fact an imaginary vision constructed in response to the challenging realities of the present. Yet this national imaginary is reproduced precisely through its own perpetual elusiveness. The Great Han is a pioneering analysis of Han identity, nationalism, and social movements in a rapidly changing China."--Provided by publisher.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 247-257) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: eternal apparel; title: Imaginary communities: fantasy and failure in nationalist identification; title: Han trouble and the ethnic cure; title: The personal origins of collective identity; title: Reenacting the land of rites and etiquette: between the virtual and the material; title: The Manchu in the mirror; title: Producing purity; title: Conclusion: neo-traditionalism in China today.